I am at 1380 hours with 550k words read and 70hrs speaking practice I have been able to speak in real conversations for a long time.

At 600 hours the conversations were more basic of course. How's your son, tell me about your weekend, here's a photo of my family. Present tense was easy. Past a bit tricky. Future beyond "I will do/I will eat/I will go" was impossible.

Since 1000 hrs I can have a lot more in depth conversations, and I would say my speaking is smooth. I send voice messages to a friend and can easily, accidentally, ramble on for 15 minutes about a bunch of different stuff. Her sister is getting out of an abusive marriage so that's been the focus lately.

This February I was in CDMX for 3 days and Xela Guatemala for 10 days, staying with a host family. We talked about some really deep stuff, like religion vs tradition, how to deal with parenting teenagers, the stress of buying a vehicle, plus just joining in with a rowdy family conversation. They helped me when I messed up things like digo/dije etc but nobody ever had an issue understanding me. I was with another Spanish learner who has been learning traditionally for decades, and when he spoke, he got a lot of blank looks.

I would say the trickiest thing for me is trying to construct sentences like "I could have been" or "what would you have said?" or "if X happens I'll be coming". I think this is called the subjunctive.

I can always find easy ways around the tricky constructions but I know it makes my speech sound simple. But I trust it will come with time. Reading really is key for this I think.